Eden: an Old-style Imperialisi

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Eden Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the death on 14th January_of Anthony Eden, former Tory Prime Minister and many times Foreign Secretary, was the reaction of the Tory press and media.

The man who was abandoned and reviled in 1957 after his disasterous Suez adventure, for his failure to serve the interests of British imperialism in the modern world, is at his death praised on a rather slender basis of his "charm" his "patriotism" and his dubious "record as an opponent of appeasement"

Lord Longford says that in the annual processsions of the Knights of the Garter, it was Eden who got the most cheers.

The applause of a crowd turning out for such occasions was less for Eden's personal qualities than for his role as a geriatric symbol of past glories of British imperialism.

One Tory commentator considered that Eden had "no sense of history. Quite so!

NAVY

His was the diplomacy and the politics of an era when British capitalism could impose the balance of power between European states and. deal forcibly with any who crossed the British Navy or imperialist interests anywhere in the world.

Eden failed to impose a moribund British power in a new world of international balance between imperialism and Stalinism and the upsurge of the colonial revolution.

Anthony Eden was born in 1897 into an old land-owning family. He was educated in the most aristocratic way possible - at Eton and Christchurch, Oxford and ended the First Imperialist War in 1918 as the youngest Brigade Major in the British army.

Pive years later he became a Tory MP and subsequently held various junior and senior offices on foreign affairs throughout the 20's and 30's.

Between the wars, the sapping strength of British imperialism was not as obvious as it later became.

any way at preventing the avoiding any outcome in the conflict between European powers which failed to serve the interests British capitalism.

Despite retrospective attempts o prove the contrary, Eden was lot m any way opposed to fascism as such.

When Hitler invaded che Rhineland in 1936, Eden said there was "no reason to suppose that the present German action implies threat of hostilities"

INVASION

When the infamous Hoare-Leval Pact acquiesced in the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, it was Eden who put up the statements in defence.

Together with Leon Blum the French Social Democrat, Eden constructed the so-called Non-Intervention Policy in Spain, through which the capitalist powers facilitated the victory of Franco.

Eden's famous resignation from the Foreign Office in 1938 allowed him subsequently to bask in what A.J.P. Taylor has called a "mythical reputation" as a supporter of strong action against Fascism.

His was less of a stand on any sort of principle than a protest against Premier Chamberlain making agreements above his head, and against British inability to have much effect in any case.

"The trouble with Hitler" he said afterwards, "is not that he is a Fascist at home - the trouble is that he will not stay at home"

As Foreign Secretary from 19401943 and 1951-1955, Eden acted as honest broker for imperialism by helping to impose the monarchy on Greece in 1944 and organising the Geneva Conference in 1954 which robbed the Indo-Chinese people of liberation for a generation.

APPROVED

In between his periods of office the post of Foreign Secretary was held by Ernest Beyin, formerly of the T&GWU, of whom it was said "Eden thoroughly approved"

Eden is best remembered and hated today for his part in the joint Anglo-French-Zionist plot in 1956 against the Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal.

His policy and its failure has been explained by Eden's gallbladder, his intellectual weakness or in his own account, from a "lack of fore-knowledge" of the Israeli invasion of Egypt.

There seems when the archives covering these events are opened the "debonair English gentleman" will be revealed as an unsuccessful liar.

" However, the failures were less personal than the result of the fact that the reality of world politics was on a different scale from the days of the nineteenth century when Palmerston could "send a gunboat"

The British Army even with the connivance of the French and Israelis was not in a position to impose its will on the nationalist upsurge of the post-war years. That, said Dulles and Eisenhower, was the job of the USA.

They could deal with the nationalists as they showed by getting the CIA to kick out Musaddiq in Iraq. Israel was to be their pawn and not anybody else's.

It had been Eden's predecessor Balfour, who first gave credence to the scheme for a Zionist state, but it was only the Americans who could now patronise its aggressive expansion.

HUNGARY

On Ist November 1956, when the Israelis reached the Suez Canal and the RAF had already bombed Port Said, the Russians decided on their invasion of Hungary. ¿yquestion of maintaining a balance For imperialism, it was no longer of power in Europe, as Eden's predecessors coulă, but now, of dealing with Stalinism on a world wide scale. On Sunday 4th NovemBudapest and the next day British paratroopers landed in the Suez Canal Zone.

The US lost leverage in world affairs by the actions of its allies, and they soon put a stop to British and French action, though not to Israeli involvement. After this failure, the Tory Party spewed out Eden without mercy.

He got new titles and praise for his "charm" in later years and at his death. But the ruling class had no further use for him.

They needed politicians of the MacMillan type, able to come to terms with colonial revolution and those like Heath who could ally with the other capitalist powers.

Eden will be remembered for his failure at Suez. But this was defeat not for himself alone, but for an older imperialist system which died a good deal before he did.

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Eden's policies were not aimed in of fascismn or "dictatorship, growth